


Where it never gets late, so we never have to leave

by Some_Impossible_Fairytale



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Caroline can't keep her hands to herself, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Klaus is trash for Caroline, Past Relationship(s), Past steroline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 08:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16445939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Some_Impossible_Fairytale/pseuds/Some_Impossible_Fairytale
Summary: After travelling the world together for a year, Klaus is ready to admit that there are things worth staying for.





	Where it never gets late, so we never have to leave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thatsanotherlovestory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsanotherlovestory/gifts).



Klaus can’t see Caroline anywhere.

Head whipping frantically from left to right, he scours the crowds of tourists for those blonde curls, that mix of sunshine, rosewater and lemon that is her distinct scent, that he memorised years ago, dashing from the Gilbert house to the high school to save her and Elena from a crazed Alaric.

They’ve only been in Paris for five minutes.

They’re not even _in_ Paris yet. Still in the airport, Klaus in full command of the trolley of their bags, having just lugged the last one off the carousel. _He_ had fully intended on compelling a sufficient entourage of lackeys, or hell, just paying for the privilege, since Caroline had asked him to show her the world.

Except apparently his experience of the world wasn’t genuine enough for Miss Forbes, so she said. She wanted ‘the full enchilada; the airport, the queuing, the ‘trivial human conventions’ that make the enjoyment real’.

Years later and she still has so much to learn. At least now he has the opportunity to teach her.

Silently, Klaus apologises to Liz Forbes. Years ago, upon returning Caroline home after graduation he had made a promise to her that he would never, _ever_ allow harm to befall her daughter while he still had breath in his body. It had been the only way he could think of declaring his intention of waiting for her, for however long it takes, in modern terms. In a way that encompassed everything that the supernatural put at risk. And despite everything in more recent years, especially since Liz’s death, he’s still breathing goddammit.

Recognising that he’s digressing onto a tangent in order to calm the paranoia that has been his companion through the centuries, Klaus breathes deeply through his nose, picturing Caroline in his mind’s eye to isolate her scent from the rest of the environment.

This is why he fucking hates flying commercial.

“Mikaelson!” Like a siren’s call through the fog, Caroline’s voice cuts above the din and _there!_ Standing in her riding boots and thick arran sweater against the cut of winter’s beginning by duty free holding a bottle of vodka aloft like an Oscar.

That’s his girl.

And his girl she is, ever since she turned at the Compound in New Orleans, suitcase on his doorstep beside her.

_“Caroline?”_

_“Klaus.”_ She’d looked, not nervous as the sight of him had always used to make her, that they would be caught together; Montague and Capulet in the fight between Original and doppelganger. But resolved. Confident. Everything he’d ever known she would be.

 _“Love?”_ He’d expected Armageddon, disaster and Hail Mary’s as their relationship had come to be. But she had simply leaned forwards, like a certain forest, so long ago now, wrapped her arms around his neck and stepped to him, pressing her lips firmly against his cheek. And when he’d leaned back, fighting hope against hope, she’d confirmed it with a kiss.

That she could awaken such feeling in him, beyond the love of family, the comforting security of power, that feeling of needing and nurturing all at once, that it had not been stripped away as Elijah had so often claimed was one thing. That she could bring it all back to the surface with one touch, one kiss was quite another. But entirely Caroline.

And then, in that surge of affection at the way she behaves to him, at the way she is so brazen and deliciously uncareful of him, he remembers Caroline saying she was ready for him to take her to Paris, Rome, Tokyo. Anywhere she wanted to go. He hadn’t even had a chance to mention he was doing clean up from putting down a rebellion and would she at least like breakfast before they discussed travel arrangements before she’s slapped her day planner into his chest, strode past him and asked how Kol was doing. When they’d started texting regularly he had no idea.

Klaus had just shut the door and told her to make herself at home while he packed.

As he reaches her, Klaus can’t help but grin unabashedly as she dumps the bottle on the trolley and hangs in the crook of his arm as he reaches to encircle her wrist.

“Hi”

“Hi” he returns, trying to maintain his irritation at the near heart attack. He does wish she wouldn’t smile at him sleepy and sated with desire, breasts pushed against his chest under her sweater. How anyone ever thought she was girly little Caroline is beyond him, the minx.

“Darling I wish you’d tell me what you’re doing. Besides what did you pay for that with? I’ve still got your bags”

Caroline raised an eyebrow at him. “Since when are you bothered whether I pay for something?” she accused huskily.

_5,4,3,2…._

“Besides!” she smacked his arm conversationally as they began to stroll hand in hand out of the terminal to where the town car she’d booked was idling by the curb “I did pay for it! I stole your card”

As he watches her oh so charmingly slide into the backseat, tongue cheekily caught between her teeth, he can’t help but wish she wasn’t so against making love in the back of a limo. He’d found that out in London.

With a sigh, Klaus climbed in readily after her. It was going to be a long drive to Paris.

****

“I thought you said we were staying outside of Paris not freakin’ Chartres!” Caroline complained, wrapping her nails on the car door as the streets started to ebb away, replaced by luscious gardens and tree lined roads.

Klaus fought the urge to smirk and reached across the seat to enfold her dark red nails in his own hand. “Patience is a virtue”

Something like a smirk flits curiously across Caroline’s own face before she straightens in her seat and petulantly retorts “Not right now it isn’t”

Caroline lapses into silence after that, content to hold his hand watch the world go by in a way she hadn’t been in the first blush of her now eternal youth. As he had done many a time before, in a way that had made him a seasoned and valued statesman, Klaus probes at the fascination that is Caroline. Perhaps it was the fact that she was caught at such a tremendous age, where everything was exciting and invincible and waiting to be discovered. Maybe it was because she embodied the very best about being immortal.

And, as usual with his thoughts on Caroline, trying to apply a paradigm by which to assess her and understand her, the concern slips away. Klaus finds he simply doesn’t care as long as she is happy. And with him.

It’s when the driver pulls the car round into one of the drives flanked by stone pillars topped by serpents rather than gliding on past that he sees Caroline perk up in true interest. She twists in the seat, leaning into the middle and finally turning bodily to press against the window as the rise and dip of the lawns continue along, before making room for more formal ornamental gardens full of statutes, fountains and shrubs. There’s even a maze if he remembers correctly.

“Are we staying at a country house hotel?”

“Wait and see”

Caroline gasps as a turreted grey brick Chateau comes into view. She’s rattling the door handle to get out before the car’s even come to a full stop, flying out the door to dance up the sprawling stone staircase to the terrace where the oak doors lie open before her. Chuckling to himself, Klaus spares a moment only to tell the driver to take care of the bags before he leaves. The sooner they get rid of prying human eyes, the better.

Unbuckling, Klaus slides out of the car and catches up to Caroline in a pace just a step too fast to be wholly human. Rather than take her hand, he stands behind her a little so that she can fully appreciate the beauty of the place whilst he is free to fully enjoy the beauty of her. Standing with her hands clasped under her chin in an adoration, Caroline’s eyes flit impatiently from the turrets to the windows to the front door and back again.

“What is this place?”

“It’ popularly referred to as the _Le trone du serpent, Cherie”_

It’s the first time in a while he’s seen the serenity of Caroline’s features crack during this trip; a tiny imperfect furrow carving a place for itself between her eyebrows as she tries to reconcile what he’s saying with the beauty of the building.

“The throne of the serpent?”

He’d been pleasantly surprised by her mastery of the French language and intended to make a point of getting her to be fluent by time they left.

“ _Oui”_

Hearing the driver pull out of sight, Caroline dives for the front door only to stop stock still in the entrance hall. It’s a magnificent sight; dominated by a twirling staircase of marble, a black and white chequered floor and statutes of Goddesses; Venus, Themis, Persephone and Athena.

“There’s no check in desk.”

“You’re right.” He really shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as he is.

“And nobody else here”

“Doesn’t look like it”

“Klaus-“ Caroline’s teeth snap together the way they do when he’s being particularly evasive about things.

“Welcome home Caroline”

 **“You live here?!”** her disbelieving shriek rebounds off the marble.

Klaus grins and spreads his hands grandly; half welcome, half shrug. “Technically we live here love”

“H-how?”

“Maurice opened the house up for me when I told him we were coming back. He’s the butler. You’ll like him. I was given the house by Louis XV when Madame de Pompadour took a shine to me and just… held onto it.”

“You held onto a rococo chateau down the road from Versailles”

“Indeed. Renovated most of this in between doppelganger hunts in the ‘80s. Well, apart from the last year”

Caroline’s eyes narrow. They’ve been travelling for the last year. She had wanted to do Paris first, but he had convinced her to go the long way around, travelling through Tokyo and working their way back. But the builders needed time.

“Time was there was statues of Zeus, Ares and Poseidon alongside Athena here. And Nemesis.” Statutes for Power, War and Revenge as well as Strategy. “But I thought we needed statutes that better reflected your attributes better”

Caroline twirls on the spot again as she looks at the towering Goddesses again. Women of strategy, love and beauty, justice, power and death. Women like Caroline.

“Welcome home love” And this time the way he says it, the loving grin on his face, tells her exactly whose home it is now. “Remember how I said it was popularly referred to as the Serpent’s Throne. Well now it’s _le trone de la Reine.”_

Caroline moves so fast that she blurs into vampire speed as she rushes him, tackling him to the floor with such speed that his head cracks of the stone.

Klaus catches her, laughter bubbling in his throat “Easy, I just finished renovating!”

“Oh, you _impossible **asshole”**_ Caroline complains even as she straddles his hips and rips his Henley over his head.

_****_

“Caroline?”

An hour later, she’s staring out over the lawns of her new home thoughtfully, champagne glass in hand, gazing off through the trees in the direction he had shown her led to Versailles.

There’s a warm purple shawl wrapped around her shoulders, mostly forgotten, the wind chasing the curls it’s teased free from her chignon.

She has never been more beautiful in the rosy evening of Paris. And Klaus, ever a man of business, recognises his moment when he sees it.

“Oui?” he tastes the familiar pleased smile at her enthusiasm, but Klaus forces it back; pulling his lips straight in an effort to be serious. Focus on the reason he brought her here, why he paid whatever was asked to get the house finished for today. This is after all the most serious thing he’s ever done in all his lifetimes. He’s not sure if Caroline realises it, but today is the anniversary of the horrendous Mikaelson ball. The day he realised he’d love her forever.

“Will you marry me?” No embellishments, no heartfelt build up. It would be insincere and unnecessary. He is not Stefan Salvatore. Although it was Stefan who had given him hope, when he’d seen that the dead man’s rings were no longer around her neck. His unspoken question had been confirmed when Rebekah had asked, in her tactlessly tactful way, what the hell Caroline was doing in New Orleans.

“ _A long time ago, Stefan and Elena had just broken up and he wasn’t sure how he was going to get over it. So, I told him, I told him that one day he would meet someone new, and fall madly in love, and move on without even realising it.”_

He remembers feeling the burn of her eyes on his face as he mixed paints for the portrait Rebekah was sitting for.

“ _And I realised recently that I had managed that for myself, backwards. I had fallen madly in love without realising it. And now I’m ready to move on.”_

 His heart is in her hands as it is. This is simply the final proof. What better evidence could there be, not of her loyalty, unfailing and untested, even in his darkest actions to lift the curse through Elena and then create a Hybrid army. Her stalwart belief in his goodness, in his capacity to love. No, it was not Caroline who needed to prove that she wouldn’t leave him, that her loyalty was guaranteed for all time.

It was his.

“What?” The sunny French accent falls away as she puts her champagne glass back down on the terrace’s stone balcony just a touch too hard so that the glass grinds on the stone in protest.

“I asked if you would marry me, love? Please?” he curses when the strength leaves his voice on the final syllable, but he’s never wanted anything so much. To be able to have her as his wife, to introduce Caroline as his, in the fullest, most human way there was. That hummingbird in the Andes was not the only time he thinks about being human anymore. To be able to say that someone like her loves and will always love, someone like him over everyone else in the world. To walk through eternity beside her, regardless of their distance, wherever their adventures might take them, or separate them, from one town to halfway across the world.

Caroline’s mouth opens and closes. Once. Twice. She’s probably trying to work out if he’s serious.

She swallows, pulls her hand away from where she was resting, somewhat heavily, in her surprise on the balustrade.

“Yes. Yes, I will marry you”

“I want to marry you here, in Paris, in our city”

Caroline nods so vigorously he fears her neck will snap before it stops like a statute.

“What? What is it?” Panic seizes him by the throat, chokes out his joy. “Our city?”

“Don’t you want it?”

Caroline’s head tilts and she nibbles on that delicate lower lip.  She nods, slowly. Caroline being selfish. He should throw a parade.

“Rebekah will crucify me if we get married here mind. She’s probably already planning a big wedding in New Orleans or Mystic Falls as we speak”

Caroline giggled and wrapped her legs around his waist. “Don’t worry. I’d save you”

And for that Klaus has to kiss her, pull her close and seal their vow with tongues and lips, eager and assuring, a promise of everything they are and everything yet to come. Klaus takes it as victory when they break apart and Caroline leans to press her forehead to his breathing heavily.

“You already have done my love. You already have”


End file.
